Killing hogs

My granddaddy raised hogs.

I still remember the last hogs he raised. I was maybe 12 years old. He let me name one of them, and I named him Tobey.

My mother still talks about how he raised and slaughtered hogs. She tells how, when it came to hog-killing time, my grandfather (actually my great-grandfather, but I knew him as my grandfather), after a hog had been killed and gutted, would immediately send the liver to the house. That delicacy would have his name on it, and would be eaten for supper after a long, hard day of slaughtering hogs.

Hogs were the prime source of meat for most families in the rural south, especially during the depression. There were a couple of reasons for this. Number one, it didn’t take a lot of land or resources to raise hogs. All that was needed was a place for a pen, some water for drinking and mud wallowing, and slop. Pig pens could be found anywhere, using most anything to keep the pig penned up; plywood, tin, fencing wire, barbed wire, whatever was available. Slop would be, well, slop. Grandaddy had a can on the back porch that "parts and leftovers" would be put in, and then carried down to the pigpen and tossed into the trough.

The second reason was even more important. There was almost no part of the hog that couldn’t be used….with the exception of the squeal. Every part of the hog had a food-use...the head, the meat, the guts, the feet, and yes, even the tail. Chitterlings, souse meat, scrapple, jowls, tounge, brain, ears, fat, and even the snout (sometimes called the "rooter") would be saved and eaten. One of my favorite "other parts of the hog" are the "cracklin's", that hard residue left in the bottom of the cast iron pot after the lard has been boiled all day and then poured into containers to harden. I love the cracklin's cooked into cornbread.

Nothing from the hog would be wasted.

My granddaddy used to say, on the first cold day of fall, that it was “cold enough to kill hogs!” That day was usually mid-October.

Come to think of it, October IS a good month for hog killing.

The way to kill hogs back then was to hit them in the head with the back of an axe or sledge hammer, or shoot them in the back of the head or between the eyes. As soon as the hog was knocked down or shot, a farmer who knew what he was doing would take a very sharp knife and pierce the jugular vein. This was called, “stickin’ him right in the goozle.”
The hog would then be scalded, scraped, cleaned, cut up, chopped, ground, cured, and smoked.

When the day was done, and the hog(s) had been slaughtered and dressed, there was always a celebration of sorts. It was a great day. Another autumn had come and there would be meat for the winter. The smokehouse was full again. All was right in the farmers world.

Saturday will be a good day to kill hogs. They will have to be hit hard and brought to their knees. There can be no mercy with the blood-letting. Auburn needs to hit them "right in the goozle".

Mid October. A touch of fall in the air. Hog killing time.

It won’t be easy, but killing hogs never is. It’s a messy job and a long day of hard work.

But the result will be worth it. Another win in the smokehouse. More meat to chew on. And at the end of the day, nothing left of the hogs except, maybe, a squeal or two.

Beat Arkansas.